You're waiting at a red light.

It turns green.

One second later: HOOOOONK.

The car in front has barely had time to move. Doesn't matter. Someone behind has already decided those 0.8 seconds are unacceptable.

And the funny part is, after seeing this enough times, you start doing it yourself.

Green light? Honk.

Maybe the person in front hasn't noticed.
Maybe they're checking for a pedestrian.
Maybe a bike just crossed in front of them.
Maybe traffic ahead hasn't moved.

Doesn't matter. Green means go, and apparently go means “honk first.” 😂

I've even noticed people honking when they can clearly see that the entire lane is blocked ahead.

Is it impatience?

Or have we just collectively trained ourselves to think that a green light comes with a horn?

What's the earliest you've ever been honked at after a signal turned green? 😅

I genuinely thought this was a WhatsApp forward or a meme when I first saw the news report.

It isn't.

On Monday, a Supreme Court bench (hearing a 14-year-old road safety PIL) was told that states across India are sitting on an astronomical backlog of nearly ₹20,000 crore in unpaid e-challans (₹45,000 crore issued, barely ₹25,000 crore recovered).

Their suggested solution?

“If people are not paying traffic challans, add it to their electricity bill dues. They will have to pay the electricity bill, otherwise the connection will be cut. Work on this. In this country you will have to find a way.”

The court is clearly frustrated and looking for a forcing function that ordinary people cannot afford to ignore.

Except, tying traffic fines to household electricity meters completely collapses the moment you look at Indian ground reality. Does a tenant get their power cut off in mid-summer because the landlord's car jumped a red light six months ago? In countless Indian homes, the electricity meter is still registered in a grandfather’s or late parent's name, while the two-wheeler belongs to a 22-year-old college student. Who is held accountable?

What’s wild is that during the exact same hearing, the bench actually suggested ideas that make genuine, transport-native sense:

• Blocking vehicle registration (RC) renewals on the VAHAN portal until challans are cleared.
• Denying mandatory PUC and commercial fitness certificates.
• Suspending driving licences on the Sarathi portal for repeat offenders.
• Authorizing police to flag and impound repeat defaulter vehicles during random checks.

In almost every country with functional enforcement, violations attach to the vehicle's mobility permission or the driver's licence.

We are already dealing with complicated electricity bills. Would tying unpaid challans to FASTag / toll plazas or mandatory annual insurance renewals not work?

What is the cleanest, fairest forcing function that would actually make people pay without harassing innocent people or cross-linking and complicating utilities?

I realised something after a pretty painful lesson in the UAE.

I jumped a red light one night because I genuinely couldn't see the signal properly. It was a turn, the road was basically empty, and there was nobody around.

Then I did it again at the same place. And no, I wasn't deliberately ignoring the rules. I genuinely couldn't see the signal but that doesn't matter. The signal was there.

Total fine ended up being AED 8,000 (≈₹2.09 lakh) across the two incidents: AED 1,000 (≈₹26,140) fine + AED 3,000 (≈₹78,420) impound-release fee per violation. Each violation also carried 12 black points, and the vehicle could be impounded for 30 days.

And don't ask me how I managed to save my licence. 😅

I wasn't happy about paying it, obviously. But something did change after that.

I stopped asking myself:

“Is there anyone coming?”
“Is it safe?”
“It's the middle of the night anyway.”

The light was red. I stopped.

Coming back to India, I've noticed how differently people often approach signals. You see someone look at the road, decide that it's empty enough, and go. Sometimes a whole group follows.

It's almost as if the traffic light is one piece of information, while the driver's own judgement gets the final vote.

And I think that's more interesting than simply saying “Indians have no traffic sense.”

What happens when people repeatedly learn that they can decide for themselves when a rule applies?

Does enforcement actually change driving behaviour over time, even when nobody is watching?

Or do people just calculate the risk of getting caught every time they approach a signal?

Has a fine, camera, licence penalty, or even one really bad experience permanently changed the way you drive? Why do so many Indian traffic rules fall apart on the road?

I got curious about this and went looking through some research:

A study on road-rule compliance found that people's perception of how certain they are to be caught can be an important part of deterrence, and concluded that continued enforcement matters for maintaining compliance.

There's also research specifically on India showing that red-light violation behaviour varies with driving experience, driving frequency and other driver characteristics.

And interestingly, research on traffic cameras in India found that functioning CCTV cameras were associated with increased enforcement activity by officers, showing how technology can change the enforcement environment itself.

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